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Thursday, March 24, 2011

What's in a name?

Believe it or not but I feel like one of the hardest things in filmmaking is coming up with a good title. Titles can make or break your movie. If you have a good title, it might entice someone to be curious enough to go see it. A good title should be catchy, yet leave you wanting more. If it's too long people don't say or don't say it right. Plus if it's long then the font will be smaller on a movie poster or post card. If it's too short or obscure people won't have any idea what your movie is about. "There exist single-pronoun films that are considered classic. Two come immediately to mind: Them and It (The Terror from Beyond Space). Somehow those two titles inspire a sense of dread. On the other hand, They conveys nothing—and is only marginally better than its clunky alternate title, Wes Craven Presents: They." (06.28.10 | Jason Marcewicz ) There is obviously a happy medium but I'm not sure if there is a good criteria.

I'm struggling with giving my movie a title. I've honestly just been calling it Yarn Graffiti Documentary but that is very long and not exciting at all. John likes City in Stitches or Cities in Stitches. He also thinks that Yarn Bombers or Yarn Bomb would be ideal. I'm not sure if Leane and Mandy have that term trademarked or whatever. Some people I met at the Knitted Wonderland installation came up with City Stitchers but John pointed out that sounds silly and almost cartoony. There are a lot of puns with knitting lingo but I don't want to exclude crocheting. I like the term "Fiber Artists" because it includes everyone but I'm not sure if that's a title and it sounds more arty and less graffiti thug-y. I'm working on my treatment and I keep referring to my doc as "Untitled Yarn Graffiti Documentary" which is clunky and not working for me. I'm frustrated. I need help. Any ideas?

The other thing is that it's still early to glue myself to a title. For example, if the documentary takes on a heavy feminist element I could call it Femiknitist. How can I come up with a great title when I've only filmed like 1/6 of the material?

5 comments:

I like all those suggestions. Simple "Yarn Graffiti" works too. I also like including "artists" in the title -- Yarn Bomb Artists, Yarn Graffiti Artists, or simply "Grafitti Artists" with the title stitched...